My Worst Run Yet

It was horrible. Seven miles in one hour, four minutes. That's a pace of over nine minutes per mile. Mind you, if I can maintain that for 26.2 miles, I'll still come in at just about four hours, but I want to be doing better for my shorter practice runs. Let me tell you why it sucked.

Over the weekend, I rode my mountain bike 11 miles on a cool race out in Santa Margarita. Eleven miles on a bike is a lot like 44 miles on a road bike. I think a 1:4 ratio is about right because on a road bike, you're pushing muscle, but the bike itself is lighter. Mountain bikes are heavier, plus you're going down mountains with rocks and switchbacks and roots and it beats a rider up a lot more.

It was my first mountain bike ride in about a year, and it beat me up. I don't think I was fully recovered yet. Running seven miles on the heels of that ride was hard.

Also, I'm both a writer and a runner. I don't follow your advice when I'm writing because you're not a writer. Thus, your advice is worthless. But for some reason, I followed the advise of my wife, a non-runner, when it came to my route last night, and it hosed me.

I took a different street, past friend Hilary's house, and then I had a steep uphill for about 1/2 to 2/3 of a mile. Then I ran 3/4 of a mile around the lake which was horrible because of the traffic and also the uneven treacherous ground. So that portion was inconvenient, irritating, and scary. I was able to get back onto my normal route, but the damage had been done.

I'm not upset at my wife. It's not like she was being malicious. But again, I wouldn't follow your advice for writing, I should not have followed her advice for running.

Lastly, life being what life is, I missed my last two runs. (Thanks, life — jerk.) I hated the idea of just not doing them, so I played catchup by doing my big run on Monday evening. So aside from the bike ride and the stupid lake, I just wasn't as conditioned as I'd have liked to be.

But let's be clear on this: I ran seven miles successfully and without dying. I listened to some great metal while doing it. And it was my longest run since I started again. And here it is the next day and while I am a little sore, I'm not cursing the world. And you know what they say: a bad day running is better than a good day at work.

And it was. And I'll do it again.

Running at Night

Well, this is heartening.

I actually sort of skipped week 2, but that's ok because I was a week behind. Further, doing only four miles last night would have felt incomplete.

Speaking of last night, I prefer to run at night for three reasons. First, the sun isn't beating down on my head, and it's generally cooler. Second, there are less cars on the road which is safer and car exhaust makes running more difficult. Third, when it's dark, it's hard to see my surroundings. When running on a fixed route, seeing the same mile go past me four times gets boring and distracting and makes it easier to quit.

Let me try to clarify. First, it's not like I can't run in the daytime. I can. But more people are driving cars during the day, the sun is hotter, the air is drier. It's just less fun.

In addition, if I'm running a course known to me — a track at the high school, the 1-mile block I run around, it gets boring being able to see everything over and over. Believe it or not, boredom is distracting. It makes it easier to give up tonight and run tomorrow instead.

But when it's dark, the air is cooler. Less people drive at nighttime and I simply don't believe the runners who say car exhaust doesn't effect them. I can tell the difference going from the weird little residential streets that make my course to the highway that is my half-mile route home. Exhaust slows me down and it just sucks more to run with cars nearby.

But I expect all that to be a non-issue with the marathon. Why? Because it's a 26.2-mile track, not a 1-mile track I'm going to run 26 times. Meaning the scenery will change with every step, with every mile. So I wont be distracted with boredom. Probably. The sun could be an issue, though. I imagined dumping water on my head, but water drips down one's back and lands immediately in the butt-crack which leads to swamp-ass. I'll have to think on this.

Stevie's been great lately. I don't actually have anything to report with her other than she loves me and I love her. The heart wants what the heart wants. Oh, and the other day, Lance Armstrong himself congratulated me on my fastest mile yet. I don't know how fast that was, but my overall pace for the three-mile run was 8:14, which is about a minute faster than I need to maintain if I want to finish in under four hours. Which I do. It will also give me a bit of a buffer when I slow down toward the end of the marathon.

I'm working on making a recording of Stevie telling me I'm doing a great job, but GarageBand is remarkably not easy to use for basic tasks, so who knows when that'll happen.

Finally, on Friday, I had my first personal training session at my gym. Thing is, "personal training" has the same sort of crappy connotation as "Pampered Chef" to me. Pampered Chef stuff might be great, but it's got "entitled asshole" written all over it. First of all, you are, at best, a cook, not a chef. Second, you don't deserve to be pampered. You're a douchebag.

So I don't do personal training. I go to lifting lessons. My first lesson was with Susan.

A photo of a photo. She's still a good looking chick.

What was awesome about her is that she was in incredible shape. She looked fantastic. I guess I just feel that a lifting teacher should look incredible. A fat lifting teacher is not somebody who I would trust to tell me what is a good idea. It'd be like trusting a mechanic without dirty fingernails or a computer salesman without an Apple shirt.

Anyway, she taught me a lot of stuff I didn't know before. Today was the first real workout I've had since then, and it was incredible. Way better than days previous. I spent half as much time at the gym and got twice as much out of it.

That tells me she's a good teacher and I was ready to learn.

Alright. This has turned far too long. I'll leave with this extremely marathon-themed photo which I took today at the gym.

Thanks again, Blaine. The shirt has been an inspiration to me, believe it or not.

Just Like the Good Ol' Days

I did a four-mile run tonight, and it felt great. All the stars aligned, it all came together. I had a wonderful time.

It felt as good as the good old days on the golf course. Almost.

I still have to pay attention to traffic which I never did on the golf course, but otherwise only sort of. The two streets I run laps on are really small, dead streets, and I only saw one car. The dark sky, the trees overhead, and the cool air — I wore long sleeves tonight and it's stinking July — all made for an ideal run.

Actually, now I think about it, there was one small distraction. My Nike + iPod voice, Stevie — I named her Stevie — has always told me when I'm half a mile into my run. Where by "always," I mean, "on my other two runs up to this point." Tonight, I got well past where she should have told me how well I was doing, so I stopped and checked to be sure all was working.

I guess that extending my goal from 3 miles to 4 made it so she extended her praise a bit. I was at .7 miles, and when I got up to 1, she piped up and told me how good I was.

And I think I'll tell you how I do my headphones. Friend Blaine uses an armband — most of the world uses an arm-band. I don't really care for armbands. They distract me and make me think about how huge my huge guns are instead of focusing on what's important: runners having better sex.

Instead, my iPod goes into my pocket, and the earbuds in my ear. But that leaves a relatively long cord sort of dangling and getting in the way of my arms pumping. So I attach the cord to a safety pin in the middle of my shirt.

It requires a pretty long cord, and I don't think this is idea for everyone. I use these here Sony lightweight earbuds and have been very happy with them. They feel good, sound good, stay in my ears, and cost $10 at local shops. If I destroy them in the car door or similar, it's not too big a loss since I can get more.

Tonight, by the way, I did listen to the new Amorphis album, and it's a hell of an album to run to. Amorphis [iTunes, Wikipedia] may well get promoted to one of the official bands of my running route. Kamelot [iTunes, Wikipedia] was the first official band of my route.

Looks like that's about all I've got for now. I loved my run and I love Stevie. I've learned to trust her and not doubt her. She's got my best interests at heart, and she'll tell me when I do good. Amorphis and Kamelot will keep me company the rest of the time.

Mister Brightside

Today was an interesting day. The gym I go to gives three free personal training sessions to folks. I had my first one during my lunch today. There was no training, just paperwork, and talking about my health goals so I could get paired with a a trainer who would best fit my needs.

So that's pretty heartening. I'll head back Friday to get actual training by an actual person. I look forward to that. I get a lady trainer who's done marathons and body building, and if the picture on the wall is any indication, she's hot, which will lend credibility to her advise.

Then I went for my regularly scheduled 3-mile run. It went well despite dumb stuff.

First: Dream Theater, while the official band of my bike shop, is not the official band of running. They suck to run to. Suck. I don't know why I didn't just skip forward to the new Amorphis album. Underslept and overrun, I guess.

Another lame thing that happened is half a mile into the run, I got a gnarly thorn in the side of my shoe. It sent me straight to the curb which was a bummer, but taking it out was easy. It should be. It was about a quarter of an inch long.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the spider-bites. I assume they're spider-bites, anyway. The weather's been insane lately, and the other night, I slept with a lot of sheets off and woke up with my left foot looking like it's got the pox. Here's what it looked like immediately after my run:

But here's the thing: for all that, it was a great run! I feel fantastic! On that final stretch home, some girls cheered out of their car at me. It might have been mocking, but I don't know that for sure, so I choose to believe they were cheering, not jeering. I choose to believe I showed them what a real man looks like, and made them all feel slightly bad knowing they were headed back to skinny, toneless 19-year-old boys with scraggly beards.

So I feel great right now, showered and watered. I didn't feel so great during the run, but right now, I feel like I'm right on schedule. Bring it on. Wednesday's 4-miles? I'm ready.

Nike + iPod and Also a New Route

I have a new route I can run from home. It's nice because it's a just under 1-mile loop, plus 2/3 of a mile there and back. Additionally, if I get bored, I can expand into the Atascadero Lake Park if I so choose since the outside edge of the loop butts up against the Lake Park itself.

In the following diagram, home is, inexplicably, I.

Tonight, I was scheduled to run 2 miles, but ran 2.46 miles instead. Weirdly specific number, isn't it? I come by it honestly, though. It's what Nike + iPod tells me.

You see, Nike + iPod is a sensor that goes into your Nike shoe — or on top of, in a little pouch if you run with Asics like me — that talks to a little dongle that goes into your iPod nano's dock connector.¹ When you're done with your run, your data is transferred to iTunes and to the NikePlus.com website which is a ridiculous mess. It's horrible. I doubt I will use it, opting instead to just refer to iTunes.

It's hard to read small. Click to see it bigger.

Anyway, I attached the sensor, attached the dongle, and went for a run to see how it went.

It was good. Both the route and Nike + iPod were good. Listening to my music was, as always, great, but having a sexy librarian talk to me in what was obviously intended to be — but didn't quite achieve — a neutral tone was lovely. She told me when I was half a mile in and when I'd reached the halfway point of my 3-mile goal.

We'll see how it goes on longer runs. If I'm running a long time and she keeps talking to me, it could get really distracting. But if she only talks to me a little, that's encouraging.

Also, the cardboard slip Nathan ships their pouch on said it's "virtually undetectable." True, it was only a 2-1/2 mile run, but even when I tried to detect it, I couldn't. I actually began to wonder if I'd put it on the right foot.

I feel like I'm getting into my stride — no pun intended — with running again. I've only done short runs up to this point, but that's ok. My body's still getting used to it, and I don't need to push any harder than I'm going. My body aches from butt to feet, but it's good. It's the sore of improvement, not of damage.

I'm feeling really optimistic and really healthy. It's good.




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1: No dongle required on an iPod Touch or iPhone. It also works with iPods Classic. 

I Ran and It Counts as a Run — Shut Up!

Against all odds, I ran 3 miles this evening.

First, and Blaine mocked me for this, I complained that my thighs are aching like crazy. They are. Still. But I ran anyway because I couldn't stand the idea of telling Blaine, "yeah, I didn't run because I was a little sore from running last time. I needed a little me time, you know?"

So I got dressed and got iPodded and headed to the high school track. Which was in use for some minor event. The lights were on, there were people in the stands, cars in the parking lot.

So I went to the gym. They have an outdoor track that's ¹⁄₅ of a mile long. Three miles would mean 15 laps. Fine. I started running, and halfway through my second lap, they locked the gate on me.

Now, I don't have another place to run. I just don't. I don't have a neighborhood route yet because there's no sidewalks in my neighborhood and up to this point I haven't been able to relax enough on the street to enjoy running. It's why I used to run on the golf course. Well, one of the reasons.

So, not able to stand the idea of telling Blaine, "dude, I couldn't run on the track and I couldn't run on the other track and there were no other surfaces to run on so I went home and ate pizza," I went inside and ran on a treadmill.

I did all three miles, but it doesn't feel like success. It feels like microwaved dinner. Still, I did it, and I'm on schedule and I didn't die and my thighs didn't fall off. So it counts.

Barely.

Trial Run Aftermath

Ugh. I know I shouldn't be complaining — I got to run after all, didn't I?

But my god, I cannot overstate how much my thighs ache today. Going to bed last night was kind of tough since my hips were all like, "hey! You can't do that to us! WTF!" But I was able to make it right. And this morning, I basically felt fine. I felt like I'd run for the first time in a long time, but I didn't want to die or anything.

But now, this evening, I want to die a little bit. My thighs! Ugh! Going down stairs is a flat-out punishment.

Speaking of punishment, the following is the schedule Blaine put together for me.

I am really really grateful today's Tuesday and I get to rest. If I had to run again tonight, I'd fall over instead of run, and I'd have left my phone in the car, so I wouldn't be able to call 911. I don't know what I'd do then. Hollar, I guess. Cry.

More ibuprofen is in store for tonight. Good ol' Vitamin I, the runner's daily vitamin.

Tomorrow, the schedule says I run 3 miles. I'll let you know if I survive.

Trial Run

I got my new shoes yesterday, and tonight, I went for a trial run.

It was good. I did well. I only walked once, and then only about 10 steps. I had to burp, and all the up and down motion was preventing it.

Tonight, I ran for time, not distance. The time was 20 minutes. I kept the time with a 2-song playlist: If I Could Fly, 3:30; and The Keeper's Trilogy, 17:06, both by Helloween. Total running time of 20:36. I could have gotten more precise, but I like both those songs quite a lot.

And I did just about everything wrong. I ate too much and ate it too recently. I wore a cotton shirt. I didn't bring water — thought in my defense, I was running at the high school track where there are water fountains. It wasn't my fault the water was turned off. I didn't have chap stick. My sock was a little irritating on my left foot, but who cares, it's only 20 minutes.

I did 8½ laps in that time, and I did them in lane 4. Laps in lane 1 are ¼ mile, so I assume that in lane 4, they're very slightly over ¼ mile. Meaning in 20:36, I ran just over 2⅛ miles or not quite 4 kilometers.

And I feel pretty good. My guts aren't particularly happy, but my knee's ok. It protested a little at the beginning, but I altered my gait, and that took care of that. My feet aren't used to running and are all twingy and weird, and my hips feel funny. I can't remember if this is how I felt back in the day when I first started running or not.

My goal for the immediate future: lots of nice cold water, some ibuprofen, a shower, and bed. I'll get up, work, and do it again. Somewhere in between, I'll publish the running schedule Blaine made up for me to get me marathon ready in time for the Long Beach Marathon.

My New Shoes and How I Got Them

Today, I went to The Runner‘s Warehouse in San Luis Obispo. They are owned by the same entity that owns Art's Cycelery. I've always liked Art's, and when I went into the Runner's Warehouse a couple weeks ago, the place reeked of competence and experience, so I went back and bought these.

They are Asics Foundation 9's, and I love them.

The Runner's Warehouse experience was a weird and cool one. I brought my old running shoes with me, and the clerk, a very fit fellow named Ashley, examined them. He put me in a pair of tester shoes with no arch support and had me run on a treadmill for about 15 seconds while the nearby iMac and video camera recorded my feet hitting the ground. I deeply regret not asking to have those files emailed to me.

Anyway, we examined my gait, and I tried on three pairs of recommended shoes. I ran in the pair that felt best, and my stride looked far better.

But then I asked if I could try some shoes in the next support class up. It was these Asics, and they felt stunning. So so good. And running in them gave me as much of a gait improvement as there was between no support and that first pair of shoes I mentioned.

So as of this posting, I have not run in them yet. The weather's been horrendous, so I just haven't gotten there. But this evening, I will run for 20 minutes or so, and I'll post again. It looks like my marathon training has really begun.

Blaine's Role in My First Marathon

Quickly: Don't let me get away with being a weenie.

Excuse crusher Blaine on the left, excuse maker me on the right.

I don't know what my deal is. I want to run a marathon. But I keep coming up with reasons I can't or shouldn't. I'm an idiot. The following is an email exchange between us this morning:

Blaine: Have you started jogging yet?

Me: I don't have shoes yet. I've been on the elliptical and I'm lifting weights and swimming, but not running proper yet. I know I'm falling behind, and I'm not sure I'm gonna make it this year. My days are just so tightly compressed. I don't know. I need to get better at my job. 

Blaine: "I'm not sure I'm gonna make it this year?" WTF? You COMMITTED! You BLOGGED! You can't back out on me now!... Seriously though, don't push yourself if you don't think you're ready. Jenn's advice, while on the whimpy side, is probably wise. You don't want to re-injure yourself. Although there may still be time: I've never trained seriously for more than about three months, if that means anything.

What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? I love running. It's my favorite thing. I am being stupid, making excuses, and I need to man up, get my shoes, and get going. That is my goal for this weekend.

And with a track at the gym and the high school tracks both available to me, there's just no reason I can't get out and go run.

I will update again when I've purchased shoes.

Unequivocal thank you to Blaine for not letting me get away with this idiocy.